Revelations in Green and Black
by Gomro Morskopp
Summary: COMPLETE.Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible or the Cthulhu Mythos. Summary: Something is speaking to Sherri Gordon-Lipsky, nee Shego, in dreams; what it reveals may mean disaster not only for Kim Possible, but for the human race. Post-"Graduation."
1. Of Dreams, Destinies and Doom

REVELATIONS IN GREEN AND BLACK

Chapter 1

_She was dreaming again, reliving the thunderstorm, trying to get away without further incident. There was nothing to gain by hanging around. Drakken's giant robots were turning back into children's toys, falling from the sky all around her. Henchmen were fleeing the flaming lair en masse. Synthodrone 901, the almost-human android engineered to deceive and defeat Kim Possible, was no more than goo and plastic spread thinly across the signal tower that had controlled the robots. The tower itself was quickly self-destructing, electricity crackling from every welded joint. _

_Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable had foiled another flawless plan and it was time for Shego to make her exit. _

_She turned to find her nemesis waiting for her, as always. She'd lived this a thousand times since that night. Wearing her blue and white Battlesuit, the young redheaded woman barred her way, a cold and deadly glint in her green eyes. _

_Now she would ask the question Shego heard nearly every night._ "_Know what I hate?" _

"_That your date melted?" That date had been Synthodrone 901, passing itself off as a student at Middleton High. Throwing that up to Kim was not a good move, but Shego never knew when to quit. She assumed battle stance, and yet she already knew where this was heading, where it inexorably led. In the bed, beneath the silken sheets, her body jerked and twitched as if in anticipation of a blow. _

"_No," snarled Possible. "You." In just a moment, Kim would kick her off the catwalk; in just a moment, she would fall screaming onto the short-circuited signal tower; in just a moment, she would wake up sweating, heart pounding, remembering the searing current, the collapsing tower, the pain that even her superhuman ability to heal could not spare her. The humiliation of defeat at a teenage cheerleader's hands. _

"Look out look out look out –"_ something not human whispered in the darkness, and Shego spun around, dodging Kim's attack. While the younger woman was off balance, Shego seized the advantage, flung her with all her strength off the walkway. Before her eyes she saw Kim Possible, invincible Kimberly Ann Possible, shrieking and twisting in the electrical arc as the tower collapsed around her, dragging her to ruin and death far below. _

_The echoes of the falling tower faded to silence in the falling rain._

"_I – I killed her," she told the empty air. The horror of recurring nightmare was washed away in victory. She ran to the edge, looked down at the shattered, motionless figure sprawled amidst the rubble. "I killed her." _

_From deep in the rainy night the unseen whisperer replied, its voice a buzzing drone._ "You have a destiny to fulfill."

_And suddenly everything was flowers and sun and blue skies ahead, forever and ever, world without end. Shego sighed contentedly, turned over on her side and sank happily into deeper slumber. There would be no more dreams tonight. _

* * * * *

"Do you ever miss it?" she asked Drakken, sitting in their mountain cabin, sipping a latte. A far cry from the machine-filled lairs they used to frequent, all buzzy fluorescents and dingy metal. There was a cozy fire in the fireplace, and the view from the bay window was wonderful. "The old days, I mean."

"Not at all. You know, I think back on that sometimes and wonder what possessed me. Remember the Supervillain Trade Fair we attended? The "Test Your Badness Level" exhibit? I exerted all the evil force I could muster and just barely got a reading. 'Playground Bully,' if I recall correctly. That's disheartening. And I still pressed on with the whole mad science thing. _What_ was I _thinking_?"

"Yeah, well, you can't go on that. HenchCo's stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be." She had pegged the meter at a single touch. "I mean, there wouldn't have been a Super Hypollenator if you'd given up on the evil takeover schemes. There was a device that came in handy."

"I remember you _and_ Possible giving me a hard time about that invention. Unoriginal. 'Pre-villain', even. Whatever that means. More of your gangsta slang, no doubt."

"I didn't say that, she did. And no _gangsta_ worth his _bling_ would – never mind that. What I'm saying, or at least _trying_ to say is, if you hadn't cobbled together the Super Hypollenator, the Lorwardian battle machines would have wiped us all out. And the only reason you made that thing was to, you know, hold on to your dream."

"Dementor taunted me about that. Creep."

"I didn't know that."

"Never told you. It was right after the invasion. You know how he is, no indoor voice. That accent! Does he really think he's fooling anyone with that? One minute it's 'der' and 'das', the next it's 'ze' – my guess is he's really from Jersey. And that costume? Right out of the _comic books_."

She considered reminding him that she also wore a costume, once upon a time, but let it pass. "So what did he say?"

"He let everyone in the café know how _ironic_ it was: I had failed completely at evil schemes, only to come through on the good guys' side in the end." He took a sip of latte and chuckled. "It was pretty annoying at first, but that night, when I got to thinking about it – why _not_ try being a good guy? And just look. It really pays off pretty well, and no one comes bursting into the cabin with their _freak on_, trying to blow the place up. That's a huge advantage, Shego."

"Yeah."

"The money saved on insurance premiums alone –"

"Do you believe in destiny?"

"Destiny?"

"Yeah. Like, someone has a purpose in life that nothing can keep them from fulfilling. Like, maybe it was your _destiny_ to save the earth from Warhok and Warmonga."

"I couldn't have done it without you."

"Then maybe it was _our_ destiny."

"I'm done with destiny." He took another sip of latte, looked out the window at the Smoky Mountain forest. "People like Dementor get that kind of idea in their head – 'Ach! It ist my _destiny_ to take over ze werld!' - and the next thing you know there's fire and explosions, _light_ coming out of stuff, buildings falling, big honkin' hurting handed out all around. Been there, done that. Who needs it?"

"Hmmm." Shego wrote something on the back of an envelope, passed it to Drakken. "Have you ever seen this word before?"

"No." Drakken looked at it, puzzled. Only seven nonsensical letters, and yet there was something about it that was somehow sinister, troubling. "Oooo – strange vibes. What is it? What does it mean?"

"That's what I'm asking you, Dr. D. You're the mad scientific genius in touch with the weird and wild. I figured that if anyone in the world knew what it meant, you would."

"I just told you I'm not about all that any more. We've put all that behind us."

"Absolutely," she said, quite sincerely, quite convincingly, quite deceitfully. "Monty Fiske could have told me, I'll bet. He was into the mystical and occult and all that bad mojo. Deeply so."

"Fiske's a stone statue in DNAmy's collection. That's where mystical magical mojo takes you. That's where evil of any shape, size or variety takes you, period. Look at us; we're lucky to be alive. How many exploding lairs did we barely escape? How many crash-landing atmospheric disruptors did we outrun? How many foolproof plans went completely and utterly south? As many times as we – "

"You're right, you're right," she interrupted, remembering the robots, the rain, the electrical tower. Remembering the redheaded girl. "Wonder what Kimmie is doing these days, without us to stir things up for her."

"Probably busy with college. I heard that her boyfriend somehow got accepted at the same university. There's _destiny_ for you." Drakken was studying the strange word again. "That's not Latin. I don't know any language that uses that sort of configuration – and I do know quite a few languages. Even a smattering of Kobaian, believe it or not. I guarantee Dementor can't make that claim. Where'd you see this, anyway?"

"In a dream. It was written on a wall, in a dream." There was something strained in her voice. "And, you know, dreams – dreams are older than the Sphinx, and garden-girdled Babylon."

He looked up sharply. "What?"

She continued speaking, strangely distracted, almost hypnotized. Not at all the sharp, focused woman he knew and loved. "Aren't they?"

"Dreams don't mean anything, honey. And neither does this silly word." He reached out, touched her hand; the confusion left her face. "Remember the time I _dreamed_ a world takeover plan? Remember what I wrote down? Utter nonsense. Gibberish. Just like this."

She laughed, quite herself again. "Then you started writing everything you were going to do down on index cards. Boy, _that_ got old fast."

"Luckily I had a sidekick who could cover for my weak points." He laughed with her, hiding his concern. These bewildering moments were happening more and more often. Maybe he could talk her into going to a sleep clinic, because she certainly wasn't sleeping well. If it would stop the all-night tossing and turning, it would help them both. "We can't dwell on the past. Whatever we were back then, we're heroes now."

"Of course." For the moment, dreams and destinies were behind her. "We're on Kim's side now. Who would have ever guessed?"

The sarcastic edge in her voice was reassuring. "Actually, Dementor was right; it _is_ ironic."

"I won't tell him if you don't."

On the table lay the envelope bearing seven letters in Shego's neat handwriting. A word that had never been seen before in their world, in their universe.

Seven letters from a dream.

Or a nightmare.

_CTHULHU._


	2. The Horror At Go City

Chapter 2: The Horror At Go City

Kim slapped the dust off her pants, spun to face her defeated foe. "A giant robot chicken? That is _so_ 1950s."

"Cyborg, not robot! Some college student! When will you learn the difference?" Pinned beneath the metal beak of his fallen creation, the supercriminal Aviarius, self-styled dark master of winged mayhem, struggled vainly to free himself. "It had the brain of a highly trained battery hen! The ASPCA will hear of this, believe me! "

"Might try a condor next time. In about twenty years."

Go City police dragged Aviarius to the waiting paddy wagon as he shouted defiantly at his nemesis: "Well, go ahead, Kim Possible, make your snide 'laid an egg' joke. I'm used to it. Sticks and stones, you know. _Sticks and stones_!"

"That's not happening. I'm not a _fifteen-year-old_. And by the way, the ASPCA will be on _my_ side."

The Mayor pulled up as the avian felon was unceremoniously thrown in the wagon. "Excellent, Miss Possible! Excellent! Aviarius certainly _laid an egg_ this time, didn't he?"

Kim refrained from comment.

"I'd like to give you a reward, but we're going to have to find the money Aviarius stole with that contraption first. Really hoping that happens before our cable bill comes due. However, again, heartfelt thanks from all the citizens of Go City. Well, except Aviarius, of course." The Mayor motioned toward the police wagon. "He seems rather _ticked_ about the whole thing."

"No big, really; it was pretty puny as giant robots go."

"_Cyborg_!" howled Aviarius, as the police wagon bore him away.

As the Mayor turned to leave, Kim stopped him with a question. "I'm just curious, and maybe you have an answer, Mayor Goburmeister; where was Team Go during all this? I know they're not too _effective_ without Shego, but I would have expected them to at least give it a try."

The response startled Kim. Goburmeister's plump face went pale; he stammered out a reply: "T-Team Go? On, uh, on some other mission, no doubt. Somewhere else. I'm sure they'll be here when – when they're needed most."

"'_Needed most_?' You had a crazy criminal and his giant mechanical chicken rampaging in the streets. Above and _beyond_ the call of 'needed'."

The Mayor was abrupt. "I have other business. Thank you again for your help."

* * *

"I should have just let it go." Kim's eyes filled with tears, brimmed over. "I should have let it go and come on home. But they're our _friends_, Ron. Goburmeister was hiding something, and Team Go are our _friends_."

Ron held her close, waited, having no words to say. He had come back to the dorm after the game to find her here, waiting for him. Back from Go City, where she had gone on a mission alone, nearly four days before.

"It took a while, but I found them. Maximum security prison outside Go City. Designed to hold supercriminals."

"Maximum security supercriminal prison. And you got past every guard and every security system, right?"

A little of the Kim he knew shone through. "Yeah."

"What'd they do?"

"They didn't _do_ anything, Ron. Something had _happened_ to them. Something awful."

* * *

Appalled by what she saw beyond the observation window, unable to look away, Kim was completely unaware of Mayor Goburmeister behind her, was startled when he gently cleared his throat.

"I should have known we couldn't keep this a secret forever. We found them like this weeks ago, wandering the streets not far from Go Tower. Managed to contain them and get them here without incident. They haven't used their powers since we found them, but if they do…well, this is the only safe place for them now."

She finally turned from the cell, sickened, repulsed, and hating herself for feeling that way. "W – what's _wrong_ with them?"

The Mayor put his arm around her, gently led her down the hall. "They're insane, Kim. All four of them."

She stopped, turned on him angrily. "_No_! _Aviarius_ is insane. _Duff Killigan_ is insane. Every villain I've ever battled was insane. But _that- _what they were_ doing _in there_ – that's – " _Without warning she doubled over, vomiting.

* * *

She was shaking, and Ron was getting scared. He'd seen Kim in some intense emotional states, but it was always due to a mind control device or other villainous plot. This time there was no moodulator to shut down, no compliance chip to remove, no quick and simple fix. Maybe he could just reassure her. Sometimes that worked on TV.

"It's all right, honey, it's all right." Even as he said it, he knew it was useless.

"No, Ron. No, it isn't. There was more. I – I convinced the Mayor to let me try to talk to them. Well, to Hego. If any of them could remember me, I felt like he'd be the one."

"Kim!"

"He did."

* * *

Kim shivered, despite the warmth of the cell. "Hego, it's Kim. Kim Possible."

"I know you," the distorted thing that had been Hego croaked out, confined in the strait-jacket. "Saw you with Shego in a dream. My little sister. In a green fire dream."

What happened to you? Who did this to you?"

"No one… the color… it came on the comet. It did something to us, to all of us. Powers." Fragments of grey, desiccated flesh fell off his face as he strained to speak. One eye was an empty socket; shadows moved in it like spiders. "It wants something, Kim. Came here for something. Was _sent_ here. We all knew it…felt it…never talked about it. It's evil. It brings evil. Had to fight it, every time we used the power. But little sister _enjoyed_ it. Went off with the blue man."

Suddenly he lunged forward, burst the restraints, caught Kim in his grasp. Guards rushed forward, but Kim waved them off. "You have to help her. I saw her in green fire. _They'll get her if we don't help_."

"_Who_?"

With a grunt the big man released her, staggered backwards, flesh crumbling. Before Kim's eyes the terrifying disintegration accelerated, limbs falling off, bones crackling, until only a pile of bluish-grey dust was left on the floor, dust which but had a minute before been a human being. For less than a second something hovered in the air above the dust; a pale blue aura that changed color as it faded. Then it, too, was gone.

From the cell down the hall came a piteous wailing that trailed off horribly into silence. Team Go had been erased from existence.

* * *

"What about Shego, Kim? Has anyone seen her? Warned her? She might already be – "

"Even Wade can't track her down. We've tried. She went with Drakken on some secret honeymoon vacation, and I imagine he can cover his steps quite well when he wants to."

He understood exactly how a fly feels, ensnared in a web bigger than it can comprehend, awaiting a doom it could not imagine. "What's going on? What are we going to do?"

Her eyes met his; he had never seen such despair before. Not from Kim Possible. "I don't know."

* * *

_Shego was in the Kepler with the mad biker Motor Ed, blazing down the wild highway of another dream. With his extreme mechanical skills, Ed had turned the hypersonic rocket into the fastest thing on wheels; regardless, Kim Possible had somehow found a way to board it._

_Could nothing stop her?_

_Seeing her in the side mirror, Ed shouted, as he always shouted: _

"_Whoa! Red's hitching a ride! Time to show her what this baby can do. Seriously."_

"_Finally," Shego heard herself reply._

"_I'm gonna hit the Big Red Button."_

"_This is what I've been waiting for," she said, and even knowing it was a dream, she felt the pure exhilaration of evil, without reason, without purpose. "Let's go hypersonic."_

_Ed guffawed._

_Now, she thought, I say "The shockwave will cause massive damage, dooming the world to chaos!" Then it all falls apart. Like it did in reality. Like it does every time I dream it._

"We, too, desire chaos_." The whisperer. In the dream she spun in the seat to see him. In the dream she saw only Motor Ed, but the voice that came from his mouth was not his own. "_Like yourself. You alone accepted the power we gave you for what it was_. _You alone have the healing factor as well as the destructive force."

"_A comet gave me the power I have."_

"When your sun was young a supernova created a tiny rift between your universe and ours. We sent the cosmic fragment into your space, designed to seek out and transform organism. To give you the power to fulfill your destiny_."_

"_And I will. I will kill her. For real. Not in a dream. Not for you. For myself."_

"You are not afraid to destroy_?"_

"_No." Kim was on the side of the Kepler, holding on with magnetic rings, trying to open the repair panel and cut the precious power cables. In just a moment, the machine would coast to a dead stop. Another plan foiled._

"Those who feared destruction have been destroyed. They cannot interfere with your destiny_."_

_She didn't understand that and didn't care. Instead she reached out and slapped the Big Red Button, laughing like a little girl on a carousel as the juggernaut shrieked into hypersonic velocity, turning around to see Kimmie caught in the shockwave, thrown back into the belching flames of the engine, annihilated completely in a instant. She spun back around. Motor Ed was gone, the whisperer was gone, the road stretched on for infinity. _

_She jumped into the driver's seat, grabbed the wheel and shifted gears with a yell of triumph. Around her the whole world screamed her name as it died._


	3. No Turning Back

Chapter 3: No Turning Back

As if on cue, the Kimmunicator beeped, startling the two of them. "What's the sitch, Wade?" All of the despair of the moment before was gone from her voice. She'd developed an ability to immediately hide her emotions over the years; part of the cost of being a public hero. Even her family rarely saw her true feelings. Ron was the only one she could trust with her weaknesses as well as her strengths.

Wade was cheery as always. "You wondered about strange power signatures, force fields and the like. Well, we've got one. A big one."

"What's _that_ about?" asked Ron.

"Just a hunch. Coordinates, Wade?"

"Can't pin down an origin. It seems to just appear in space, surrounding the earth, beginning just below the ionosphere. NORAD's monitoring it, whatever it is; that's how I found it."

"You're hacking NORAD?" Ron was shocked. "That's just a little _overboard_, don't you think?"

"Can't stop the signal, Ron." On the tiny screen, Wade laughed. "I've wanted to say that ever since I saw that movie." Ron had no idea what movie Wade was talking about. "Kim, the power is enormous, but very diffuse. Definitely not a weapon. It might bring on a few more auroras, but nothing destructive. But it does have a focus, more or less, somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. And I can give you _those_ coordinates."

"Thanks, Wade, I'm on it."

"Can't promise anything, but it's all we've got." He signed off.

"So what's up, KP?"

"Hego –" She had to compose herself before she could continue, remembering the events in Go City. "Hego said Team Go's powers were somehow _corrupted_. Bent on evil. Shego gave in to the corruption; she _liked_ it." That explains a lot, she thought. No wonder Team Go had always seemed distracted, absent-minded, clumsy. It was a side-effect of their constant mental battle with the force that made them superheroes. Shego wasn't that much smarter or skilled than her brothers; she was simply going with the flow.

Kim wondered if _she_ could have resisted it. And hoped she'd never find out.

"Anyway, I thought if her power was mutating or out of control, Wade might be able to detect it. Called him on the way back from Go City and asked him to try."

Ron hesitated before he spoke. "Did you tell him the rest?"

"No."

"And this world-wide broadcast?"

"Not what I expected. But we should still check it out."

* * *

_She found herself lost in a chilling fog, surrounded by looming monoliths, sinister runes graven in their black surfaces. Mysterious words thundered through the air: HASTUR, VULTHOOM, ITHAQUA. Overhead the pale, shrunken sun shone wanly, casting no heat. _

_Things were moving, just on the periphery of her vision. A faceless black gargoyle flew down from the fog, perched on a monolith, watching her without eyes to see. With a loud squeal a huge rat ran between her feet, tripping her, throwing her to the ground. It looked back at her with a grossly distorted human face, tittered, and disappeared among the stones. A gigantic tentacle lashed the air just beyond the monoliths, sank back into the fog. Something clattered menacingly on the rocks behind her, but when she jumped up, ready to fight, there was nothing there._

"_I'm not afraid," she shouted, and her shout echoed strangely among the ominous stones, changing pitch and timbre, until it became a fading gibberish chant. "I don't do fear." She tried to sling a plasma bolt, but the power wouldn't come. "This is a dream," she said, to reassure herself. "This is a dream."_

"_This is a dream," came the whisperer's voice, hard-edged and urgent, circling around her. "Time is short, and you are _not_ ready." _

"_I am! I can do it. I can – "_

"_We are using all our resources to maintain this contact, and that only in dreams. When you wake, you no longer hear us. Soon the window will be closed. Soon the moment of destiny will slip from your grasp. Is that your wish?"_

"_No. No, I want this. I want this!"_

"_Then you must _open_ yourself to us. You must give yourself _completely_ to the power we gave you. We must be able to guide you in waking life, not merely here in the Dreamlands, or you will fail utterly. It will be one more disappointment to add to your list. One more defeat to haunt you in your sleep."_

"_Shut up."_

"_Drakken destroyed the Lorwardian machines. Ron Stoppable overcame the alien menace. What did you do?"_

"_Shut up!"_

"_You cleaned up the mess afterward. So Kim Possible could go to her high school graduation."_

"_You're twisting things. We fought together. We fought together that time. Joined forces. We had to. I felt like – like I owed it to her."_

"_To your enemy. To the one who kicked you into the signal tower, sincerely hoping it would kill you. The one who handed you defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation. You are too weak to seize your destiny. If only the cosmic fragment had found _her_ instead."_

"_Weak?" Her rage was infinite. "WEAK? I don't know why putting Kimmie out of the way is so important to you, but I'll do it. Without mercy, without pity, without weakness. It's _more_ than my destiny; it's my _right_!"_

"_When you wake, open yourself to us. Take that mental step. You will know what to do. It will come as instinct to you. Then we will show you the real extent of your power."_

"_I want to see you. I want to know who I'm helping."_

"_I am called Nyarlathotep. I am the soul and messenger of Those from Outside. Their thoughts are my words; to speak to me is to speak to all of us."_

"_A flunky. Sidekick. I want to meet the guys in charge."_

_Atop the monolith, the faceless gargoyle ceased its silent surveillance, flew off in alarm with a frantic flapping of leathery wings._

"_Why? Have you sharp words for great Cthulhu? Shall you bargain with mighty Tsathoggua? Will the touch of Y'golonac's hands bring you peace and confidence in your actions?" _

"_I see you all, now, or this whole game ends here. You don't have any choice. I'm the only person who can do this for you. My brothers won't; they're goody two shoes. They're afraid to really let go."_

"_You are correct; your brothers will not help us." Nyarlathotep laughed: sere, sardonic, malevolent. "Very well. You shall be the first in your cosmos to see us."_

_When she was a little girl, Shego had waited in line to ride a roller coaster that even her older brothers vetoed. The attendant had fastened her in; the cars had begun to move, climbing the first incline. Higher and higher it went, and her excitement rose with it. _

_Then it had reached the peak, and she saw what waited below, and knew she was in way over her head._

_That little girl's feelings came back to her now, magnified a thousandfold. And, once again, there was no turning back._

* * *

Drakken was downstairs, humming along with the radio's "Why Can't We Be Friends" while he fixed breakfast for himself and Shego. Despite having heard the song countless times, he still thought the refrain was "I Can't Be Depressed." Which reflected his unusually cheery mood, actually. He'd awakened early and let his wife sleep. She looked so peaceful. Maybe the night terrors had finally passed.

The omelets were almost ready when the screaming started in the upstairs bedroom. And didn't stop.

He bolted from the kitchen, practically flew up the spiral staircase. Shego had finally stopped screaming, was holding herself up against the chest of drawers, her eyes tightly shut. Repeating words over and over, like a hysterical mantra: "They're here, but they're not really _here_. They're here, but they're not really _here_. They're –"

He took her by the shoulders, shook her, repeating her name. She shuddered and looked up at him with eyes glowing like illumined emeralds. Startled, he released her, stepped back, almost involuntarily; she reached out to him, her frightening eyes fixed on his.

"No!" she cried. "Don't be afraid. I need you to not be afraid. It'll be all right. I'll be all right. I _saw_ them, but it's all over now. A dream. Just a bad dream. And dreams mean _nothing_, right? _Right_?"

"What's going on? _What have you done_?"

"Made a deal," she said, and giggled. She touched her head gingerly, as if it hurt: "I hear it. Here. Inside. Outside is inside." She laughed again. Now Drakken was the one shuddering. "There's so much I didn't know. So much more I can do. When she's dead, we'll be back together. When I kill her, we'll be back in business. We'll build an empire on little Kimmie's grave. We'll put the whole earth under our heels. But I have to do this first, and I can't do it here. A special place, a certain time. It's my destiny. It's what they gave me the power to do. I love you, but it's my _destiny_."

"Shego, please, listen to me. Something - something's gone wrong with your powers. You're not thinking straight. You don't want to kill anyone, and you don't have a destiny. We make our destiny. We don't have to be evil any more. We never had to. We _chose_ to. Please, honey, calm down and let's talk about this."

"I don't _want_ to! _I don't want to pretend any more!_" She stepped back, turned away from him. "And you don't either." She sliced the air with a hand of green fire, stepped through the glowing rift, and was gone.

He stood there a full minute in silence. "That… was new." The smoke alarm began to bleep; downstairs the omelets were a charred mass. Outside someone was knocking on the door.


	4. Danger Arranger

Chapter 4: Danger Arranger

"She teleported?" Kim was astonished and not a little apprehensive. Shego was treacherous enough without any new powers added to her roster.

"Oh, you bet. One second she was standing here, the next she was gone." Nostradamus himself couldn't have predicted this scene: Dr. Drakken asking Kim Possible and her boyfriend – what _was_ his name? – to help him find Shego before she did something…regrettable. "Got no idea where she went or what she intends to do. I'm sure of this, though: she wants to see you dead. She's convinced you can't prevent it. Destiny." Drakken spat the word. "I hate destiny. Loathe it. Everything was fine until she got _destiny_ in her head. Can you get in touch with her brothers? Maybe they can help. They might know something about –"

"They're gone."

"Gone?"

"It was all over the news." At least the media had withheld the details. Treated them with respect.

"We haven't seen the news for a week, up here in the mountains. That was why she wanted to come here, to get away from it all for a while. W- what happened to them?"

She told him.

In the kitchen, the radio was crooning Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends"; Ron had the Kimmunicator in hand. "I need an update on that energy focus, Wade. If NORAD hasn't caught you yet."

"The firewall hasn't been developed that can keep me out of a system."

"Make it fast - we've got a major Shego problem."

"I thought she was a good guy now."

"So did Drakken. He was wrong."

"Sure wish he was right."

"And she's learned a new magic trick. How to appear and disappear at will. That field has something to do with it – it led us here. I'm guessing the focus will follow her."

"Good guess."

"I'm not just about the looks, Wade."

The figure on the screen typed furiously. "That can't be right." He checked his monitors, typed some more. "This is weird. Looks like it's smack in the big middle of Middleton –"

The screen flared with an all too familiar green light, went blank.

Ron panicked, bolted upstairs. "Kim…_Kim_! We've got _trouble_!"

"_Indoor voice_, Ron. What's up?"

Downstairs the radio hissed, squealed, and went silent. Suddenly a voice came over the airwaves: "Hello, world. This is Shego; I'm sure you've heard of me. I'm broadcasting on _every_ wavelength and on _every_ digital channel, at something like, oh, four or five _gigawatts_, so I'm pretty sure you're receiving this message."

"_That's_ up," Ron explained. Unnecessarily.

"There has been a defaming rumor making the rounds," said the voice, "claiming that I've turned over a new leaf. Let me set the record straight right now: neither my husband, the infamous scientific genius Dr. Drakken, nor myself are _good guys_. We _did_ save the world from the Lorwardians a coupla years ago, but that was solely so we could run it ourselves."

"Shego," said Drakken, under his breath, "that is _completely_ out of order." He didn't like the sarcastic tone of the words 'scientific genius', either.

"And she didn't mention me or KP," Ron grumbled. "That's just wrong. If not for my monkey-fu – "

"Ssshh!"

"After some serious consideration, I really feel that putting the entire city of Middleton under an impenetrable force field, while simultaneously immobilizing every man, woman, rocket scientist, neurosurgeon, boy, girl, cat, dog, goldfish and naked mole rat in the city, is the sort of thing that will get your attention. I'm sure somebody out there wonders how I did all that; well, I'm not the same girl I used to be."

"_Rufus_! I _knew_ I should have brought him with me to college – "

"_Really need to hear this_!"

Drakken grabbed the remote, clicked the button; the TV flickered to life, revealing Shego, clad in her green and black harlequin costume, leaning back as if in a recliner, hovering in a bubble of green light three feet from the ground. "I've made some new friends, the fine folks from Outside who gave me my powers in the first place. They're a gruesome bunch, but, boy, are they ever clever. _Prodigious_ surgical, biological, chemical, and mechanical skill. And they're doing some wireless upgrades. I can feel the new synaptic connections being forged, and let me tell you, it feels _good_. By this time, I must be, oh, Shego version 4.0 or thereabouts. And there are more improvements to come. Because I have a _destiny_ to fulfill, and they want it done _right_."

"How is she doing that without a _camera_?" Drakken wondered aloud.

Her face filled the screen, eyes glowing. "Honey, I'm sure you're watching – why don't you put on some Therion or Amorphis or something? You know, something ominous and suspenseful, full of power. I really regret not having the proper _soundtrack_ for my – for _our_ worldwide ultimatum, but evidently _these people _aren't music lovers." The scene zoomed out, revealing her location.

Kim gasped.

On the screen, Shego stood up, stretched, leisurely walked through the Possible living room, lingering at each of the still figures surrounding her. "Princess, I'm sure you're watching too. Wherever you are. Did you know this city is built on a leyline nexus? I don't _even_ know what that _is_. Some kind of energy stuff, blah blah. You know the drill. Nyarlathotep says that's why I had to come here; it makes it easier for Them to reach me. While I was in town, I thought I'd pay your family a visit. You're probably already on your way, aren't you? I'm giving you about an hour to meet me. Town Square.

"Come on, Ron. We're not on her schedule. We can be there in fifteen minutes."

"Impenetrable force field, KP – "

"We'll deal with that then, Ron."

On the screen, Shego smiled, a very beautiful, very frightening smile. "I'm going to give you a fighting chance, Kimmie. You and me, hand to hand, just like old times. We'll pretend I couldn't disincarnate you with a gesture. It'll be _fun_. I'll even open the forcefield for you. Bring your monkey-boy sidekick, too, if he's not out on the football field. I owe him something as well. But if you don't show up," she said, stroking the unmoving faces of Kim's younger brothers, "I guess I'll just have to start killing hostages."

A crackling of static, another closeup. "Drew, don't be worried, everything's fine. I'm ok. I had a _bad spell_ when I saw Them, but I'm _ok_ now. Sorry I fussed at you when I left this morning. I'll see you tonight, all right? And then we can take over the planet." She cocked her head as if listening to something, scowled. "I _know_," she said to nothing visible. "I'll _be_ there. I'm talking to my _husband_, all right? Let me handle this."

The image on the screen blurred, became a wobbling sine wave, and gave way to the regularly scheduled program. A cartoon, harmless and humorous.

Drakken grimaced. "She _knows_ I hate it when she calls me Drew."

Kim turned to him. "We've got to go. You coming with?"

"Can't do that. Not yet. I have something I have to finish. Something that might help us. But I won't be far behind."

Her eyes met his. "I believe you." Then she and Ron were out the door; a moment later the Sloth pulled out of the driveway. Halfway down the road the rocket engines kicked in; the vehicle flew into the sky, was lost to sight.

Drakken watched them leave. "Godspeed, Kim Possible. I sincerely _hope_ you're all that." Then the scientist descended the staircase, went out to the garage, threw a hidden switch. _I don't want to pretend any more_, Shego had cried, _and you don't either. _ Did she know what he was working on? Was she aware of the secret lab below the cabin?

Once he had defeated an army of alien machines because he had hung on to his dream. The woman he loved had told him so. Maybe he could save her with another dream machine. If he could get it to work before her obsession with revenge engulfed them all.

He stepped into the fluorescent-lit hallway, closed the panel behind him.


	5. The Game Begins

Chapter 5: The Game Begins

They brought the Sloth down about a hundred yards from the shimmering green dome that had enveloped their hometown, in a wooded area some distance from the main highway. A black swarm of helicopters was quickly approaching from the east.

"Global Justice," said Ron. "We're one step ahead of the swords." Undoubtedly the clandestine government organization would declare the whole area off-limits; Team Possible had outwitted their operatives before, but they didn't have time to deal with them now. "OK, we're here; how're we supposed to get Shego's attention? Knock?"

Kim was already investigating the dome. On the other side she could see the border of the woods; just beyond that were dim silhouettes of houses. Picking up a fallen tree branch, she prodded the wall of churning green energy. The branch bent, but remained intact. "At least you can touch it without disintegrating." She gingerly reached out to the forcefield.

Her hand passed through it unimpeded. "Looks like she's left the door open for us."

"Looks like sudden and severe trappage to me."

The roar of the GJ copters was growing louder. "I wouldn't expect anything else. But this is all we've got." She took a few steps back, ran forward and sprang through the barrier, immediately assuming a battle position on the other side. No threat appeared to meet her. "Come on!"

Ron's puzzled look told her that sound didn't pass through the barrier, and he was no good at reading lips. She motioned for him to hurry.

Following her example, he stepped back, ran at the field, collided with it and went down. Jumped up, battered its unyielding surface with his fists to no avail. "Kim! _Kim!_ I can't get through!"

Two GJ helicopters were hovering directly above their vehicle; ropes dropped, agents descended. Armed agents.

Ron concentrated, drawing on the mystical monkey power that had enabled him to defeat the technobarbarians from Lorwardia, and brought his fists down in a blow that could have felled a redwood tree. There was a flash like lightning, the brilliant blue monkey force flaring against the bilious green of the shield.

It remained unaffected.

Several GJ agents shouted their surprise, turned toward Ron, firing tranquilizer guns. Ron spun to face them, stiffened, and slumped to the ground. He was quickly surrounded.

Kim frantically tried to get back through the barrier, but it refused to yield.

"It's a one way trip, Kimmie," said a familiar voice.

She twisted around, ready for anything; no one was there.

"I changed my mind about monkey-boy. That's a girl's prerogative. I'll deal with him later, if those torture-happy Global Justice goons leave anything to deal with."

"_Epic_ scare tactic fail. They know us. Ron'll be ok." She hoped. As she spoke, she was making her way out of the thinning woods, rushing through the streets of Middleton, surrounded by living statues frozen in mid-step, in bending over to retrieve a fallen coin, in the process of sitting down on a bench. "What have you done to these people?"

"You wouldn't understand. They don't teach it in college."

"You'd be surprised at what I understand."

"I'm a goddess now, Princess. Goddess of chaos. Will you be my disciple?"

"Not happening." Down Long St, across Kuttner Avenue.

"Then I can't waste my wisdom on heretics. They're only fit for burning. Where are you going?"

"You're the god, you tell me." Two more blocks to her home.

"Oh, my, that's almost clever. I'm at the Town Square. Don't keep me waiting. I get _antsy_ when I'm kept waiting. And then I have to find something to do. You won't like that."

"So _not_ subtle, Shego. Drakken's a lot better at veiled threats than you are. Too bad he's reformed." She cut through an alley, knocking a few minutes off her route. A dog and cat stood frozen in the shadows, a tableau of animal hostility. "When's the divorce final?"

There was no answer, but the air grew heavy around Kim as she ran, as if a thunderstorm was brewing; she involuntarily tensed up in anticipation of an attack. When Shego finally responded, she was no longer flippant; with barely contained fury her voice slashed the air. "Town Square. Ten minutes. Or someone dies."

Town Square was empty; perhaps Shego had teleported everyone to other locations. Perhaps she had simply uncreated them, useless cattle, obstacles in the way. Either deed was within her new potential; either deed was within her sadistic whim. As she stood waiting beneath the Town Square clock, thin green arcs of power crackling around her, the buzzing voice of Nyarlathotep the Mighty Messenger filled her mind with shadows:

"_The hour approaches. You _must_ be at the precise location at that exact moment, or your destiny will ever go unfulfilled."_

"My husband _will_ understand, won't he? Can you give _him_ this power? _Will_ you? When I do this for you?"

"_All questions will soon be answered. Now you must put him from your mind. You must concentrate _only_ on us. Thinking of others makes the contact difficult."_

She steeled herself for the final battle, felt the presence from Outside filling her. Almost as potent as her hatred. Today her darkest dreams would come true. Tomorrow she would bring the man she loved to her new allies, and when everything was over, they would reign supreme as god and goddess of this world.

So much for so little. A single life. What was that, in the grand scheme of things?

Surely Dr. D would understand.

Wouldn't he?

* * *

Drakken was still in the lab, desperately trying to solder a connection, a skill that had eluded him for years. It looked so easy when someone else was doing it. If Shego was here, she could fuse it with a simple touch; she wasn't, and he was dribbling solder all over the motherboard. In disgust and dismay he put down the soldering iron, leaned against the device he was racing the clock to finish. "Calm down… calm down… slow and steady wins the race. Slow and steady – "

He was still repeating it, eyes closed, when the door to his hidden lab exploded inward, clattering down the concrete steps, closely followed by a dozen Global Justice troopers charging down the stairs. Before he could react, they threw him to the ground, handcuffed him. One of them began perfunctorily droning the Miranda: "… right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…"

"No! Let me go! I have to finish this! _Have_ to!"

"Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?"

"You have no right! I've done _nothing_!"

"Dr. Drakken. Do you understand these rights?"

"Listen to me. _My wife is in danger_!"

"Your wife is holding an entire Colorado city hostage. And she stated plainly that you were in on the plot as well. We've been keeping tabs on your whereabouts ever since your much-touted 'reformation.' " The GJ man examined the strange machine, shook the parabolic antenna, picked up the peculiar helmet, turned it around in his hands. "What's this? Death ray? Your kind never changes."

"_Leave that alone_. Do you _hear_ me?" He struggled with the men dragging him up the steps; one of them stuck a hypodermic in his arm. With a groan he went limp.

"Bring this thing too. Director will be interested in seeing it. Might be Exhibit A."

They began to shove it up the steps. On the bench below lay the schematics, the notes, all the research that had led Drakken to construct the machine. A year and a half of research.

Without those notes, it was doubtful that he could finish it at all.

* * *

Kim rushed through the house, not daring to look at her parents, her brothers, as they stood frozen in time. She couldn't afford the emotion now. Too much at stake. One of the tweebs had taken over her old room; she threw open the closet, pushed the hidden switch, hoping what she had come for was still there.

The hatch opened, the light flickered to life, revealing her Battlesuit. Wade had devised it originally; over the years he had worked continually on it, introducing new technology. The last improvement, she recalled, was the introduction of nanoids: microscopic robots that could heal minor wounds on the wearer. She knew Shego had a natural healing factor many times that of a normal human being, and that was before her "upgrades;" the nanoids weren't in the ball park with that ability, but they were better than nothing.

In Town Square Shego closed her eyes, let her senses reach out across town. "She's… leaving her house. I know what she's doing. Good. She wore it the night she thought she'd killed me. The night she ruined my husband's greatest plan. It's only fitting that she should wear it to die in. It's destiny."

She laughed, quietly, gently, lethally.

"_Do _not_ fail us_," droned the Whisperer in Darkness, deep in Shego's consciousness. "_The time has almost come; the stars will soon be right. At last_."

"Yes, at last."

"_Shego_!" shouted Kimberly Ann Possible, standing at the edge of the square, knowing this might be her last battle. "I'm here. It's time."

"It's so good to see you, Kimmie," said the woman in green and black. "_Let's_ _play_."


	6. Escape Defeat

Chapter 6: Escape/Defeat

Ron slowly came back to consciousness in a holding cell; two GJ men stood outside, watching him. "Hey, buddy", one of them jeered, "a little advice. You're in the woods, you're trying to hide, not a good idea to set off a big blue flare."

"I was trying to get inside the forcefield."

"Right. And I'm Yuri Gagarin."

"OK, Gagarin, where are we?"

"Secret Global Justice base 25 miles southwest of Denver."

The other GJ agent turned to his companion in disgust. "Have you forgotten the Administrative Huddle on 'need to know' information?"

"I called in that day. The flu." He sniffed a little, cleared his throat.

"Let me sum it up. It's all about needing to know. He's a prisoner. He doesn't _need to know_ where we are. Even if he asks. Even if he asks _politely_. The blue guy there –" he pointed toward another cell – "_he_ doesn't need to know. Why?"

"He's a prisoner?"

"Right. _No one_ needs to know unless they _work_ here. And have Status Red Twelve access."

"_I_ don't have Status Red Twelve access."

"Stay here and guard these prisoners while I call someone with Status Orange Fifteen access to arrest you."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Fair enough."

* * *

Kim spun around the light pole, came back flying, caught Shego with a kick to the midsection. The older woman hit the ground hard, but was up again before Kim could seize the advantage, closing with her. They struggled for mastery; Shego kicked Kim's feet out from under her, threw her to the sidewalk, pinned her there.

"What's wrong, Cupcake? I haven't even used my plasma blasts and I've got you on the ropes."

It was true; even with the Battlesuit's cybernetic enhancement, Kim was all too aware that she was dangerously off her game. It had been quite a while since she'd faced an opponent this skilled, this vicious. Goofy criminals like Aviarius, Frugal Lucre, Duff Killigan weren't in the same league as Shego.

"College life getting you down?" she continued. "Too many late nights? _Too many boys in the dorm_?"

With a guttural cry Kim broke free, loosed a perfect storm of blows on her assailant, finally smashing her with a punch that knocked her into the Town Square clock tower. Shego reeled, staggered, shaking her head; Kim lunged in to continue the punishment. If she could just knock her unconscious, maybe the forcefield would go down, and Global Justice could help her deal with Shego. They undoubtedly had defenses against what she had been; whether they would work on what she had become was yet to be seen.

Without warning Shego raised her hand, caught Kim in a crushing vise of green energy, slammed her hard against the blacktop. "Sorry, princess, but we're all out of time." With a snarl, she slung the young woman into the clock tower, hard enough to break bones. The vise disappeared; Kim collapsed, moaning.

Shego stalked to her fallen foe, lifted her with one hand, glaring. "Before the Old Ones altered me, I was using my power like a caveman uses a rifle. Like a club. It works, but it's capable of so much more… finesse."

Kim groaned. "Get on with it."

"Once upon a time, because of the Attitudinator ray, I almost told you a little secret. Remember? When I was _good _and we were_ friends,_" she sneered. "I'm going to tell you now, because you'll never tell anyone else. I've always envied you. Always been jealous of you. Hated you. Because you made yourself what you are. Others made me what I am. Ever since the comet. Everything I am came from outside. Everything you are came from within. Now admit that I beat you today. _Admit it_."

"You – had - to cheat."

"I'm going to destroy everyone in this city. Starting with your family. I want you to die knowing that you failed them all. When they needed you, you weren't there. When you most had to win, you lost."

"I'm not dead yet," she said, in little more than a whisper, but somewhere deep within her she feared it was no more than empty words.

"We're standing in the exact center of the leyline nexus. That's all Greek to me. But what it means, pumpkin, is that very shortly you _will_ be dead and no one can change that. The Outer Ones guaranteed it. It's destiny. Immutable. Undeniable." She shifted her grip to Kim's neck, raised her high in the air. The young woman gasped, kicked, tried to pry Shego's strong fingers from her throat.

Useless.

"You might pass out before I kill you. See, I'm doing you a favor, _friend_."

* * *

The GJ guard marched back and forth, watching his charges, waiting on his arrest. A lousy way to end the day, but there were so many crazy rules and regulations in Global Justice that scarcely anyone got by without an arrest now and then. He looked in on Drakken, heard a loud clang behind him, and spun around.

Ron stood in the hall; the cell door lay in the hallway floor. "You know, I did take down the Lorwardians with my monkey fu. A jail door isn't really that much trouble."

"You know," said the guard, "there are better jobs than this in the private sector." He fled down the hallway.

Ron ran up to Drakken's cell, drew a deep breath, concentrated. "Boo-_YAH_!" he shouted, and kicked down the door.

They bolted from the prison, certain that GJ agents were already coming for them. "What are you doing here?" asked Drakken, puffing. Running didn't come easy to him.

"They got me for consorting with you. And you?"

"They got me for looking suspicious. Not a lot I can do about that, especially with Shego telling the whole world that I'm still in the mad scientist business." He stopped, pointed down another hallway. "There's a helicopter hangar this way."

"Can you fly a copter?"

"Of course I can fly a copter. Why would I suggest it otherwise?" His unfinished machine was on his mind, but there was no time to find it now. That would come later. He desperately prayed there would still be a need for it.

They ran down the hall. The hangar was unguarded; one helicopter sat on its helipad, the others were empty.

"They must have everyone and everything they've got at Middleton. Come on, let's get out of here." Ron climbed up, got in.

Drakken jumped into the pilot seat, buckled himself in, looked at the panel before him and was completely lost. There were no legible labels; every switch and button was marked with a cryptic symbol.

Ron looked out to see GJ men pouring into the hangar. "Um, we need _flying_. Flying would be nice –"

"Keep your pants on. These controls are slightly different from the ones I'm familiar with. This is, obviously, the, uh, elevation regulator. Known to more experienced pilots as the 'joystick'." He wobbled it a bit, to no effect.

"I thought you said you could fly this thing."

"I said I could fly _a helicopter_. And I have. But not _this_ one. Let's see what this does." He threw a switch. Missiles shot across the hangar, exploded in a fiery mass, blowing the door off its rails.

"OK, that's not it." He punched another button; machine guns chattered deafeningly in the confines of the hangar. GJ men panicked, scattered, ran for cover. "With all the money Global Justice must have in this thing, you'd think they could label the controls in English!"

Lasers flashed, sirens wailed, concealment fog filled the hangar.

Ron frantically reached over, punched the button marked with a large vertical arrow; turbines whined as the rotor blades accelerated.

"Oh, right!" Drakken snarled. "Why don't _you_ fly it then, Captain Constellation?"

"At least I knew how to _start_ it!"

"Of course you did! You're a _football player_! And you've got _monkey powers_! Just this side of a _Neanderthal_! _Human beings_ use _words_, not these stinkin' _hieroglyphics_!" He pushed the stick forward; the helicopter lurched into the air, shot out into the sky. It was going to be a long flight back to Middleton.


	7. Fate Update

Chapter 7: Fate Update

"It's funny. Evil plans are _always_ scheduled on the hour, but you're going to die at 2:57. I guess the stars don't align by our timetables. Whatever _that _has to do with it." Kim's eyes were half-closed, rolled back, Shego's hand crushing her throat, still holding her a foot above the ground. "But you aren't paying a bit of attention. Wake up, sleepyhead." She released her grasp; Kim fell, gasping for air, at Shego's feet.

There would be no sidekick appear with mystical monkey power salvation, no last-minute naked mole rats on the horizon, no clever cyberbuddy on the Kimmunicator with a quick save up his sleeve. The long-deferred dream was becoming a reality.

If only Drakken could be here. Just so he could see, could know that she had finally avenged all the failures, all the defeats, all the ridicule, all the prison time. Soon, though, they would be together again.

Something spoke. "_The time is short__."_

"Back off!" Shego snarled, shook her head, long black hair flailing. "This is _my_ destiny. Mine. _I'm_ in charge, not you. _Never_ you. " This was the climax of the dream, the gold at the end of the rainbow. It was to be savored. "We take our time. _I_ take _my_ time." She slung blast after blast of green fire into the sky. "_You don't rush this. Do you hear me? You don't rush this!_"

She was screaming.

Kim looked dazedly up at her nemesis as she raved and argued with nothing at all. Over the years there had been a lot of crazy people in her life. Drakken, before he reformed, and his endless world takeover schemes. Duff Killigan, dangerously, murderously obsessed with golf. DNAmy, whose fascination with Cuddle Buddies led her to create biological monstrosities. Falsetto Jones. Camille Leon. Motor Ed. The Seniors.

This was something else. This was _madness_. Something that had never been a part of her world before. Not like this.

She tried to get to her feet, fell back, involuntarily whimpered with pain.

The tiny sound galvanized Shego's attention. She knelt by her fallen foe, touched her cheek tenderly, an ugly parody of care. "Aww, is little Kimmie sick? Does she have a tummyache?_ Bite off more than she could chew_?" One finger of her clawed glove traced a line on the girl's forehead. She stared, fascinated, at the way the sharp point pressed into the soft white flesh.

Kim was trying to speak; Shego bent low to hear her whisper.

"D - Drakken – told me something was w-wrong. Shego, you – you need help..."

"I need help? _I need help_? _You're_ the one who needs help, princess. But look! No cavalry coming over the hill this time. Just you and me. Together..." cooed the woman in green. "Drew would make a speech here, I'm sure. 'You were a noble foe, blah blah blah.'" She stood up, a cruel twisted smile on her face. "But you were just a silly little schoolgirl who was _always_ way out of her league. The only thing that saved you was dumb luck. And sooner or later, everyone's luck runs out. It's their _destiny_." She glanced at the clock tower; mere seconds to go. Stretched out her hands; searing plasma arcs crackled between them. "Shoulda stayed on campus today, schoolgirl. This is _so_ gonna hurt, and you're gonna feel every second of it. Goodbye, Kim."

Then several things happened in an instant:

Overhead the forcefield opened; a beam of darkness, a negative light shot down from the sky, completely missing Kim, engulfing her opponent.

Caught in the sinister ray, Shego spasmed, staggered backward, green plasma wildly sizzling around her. The shaft of shadow followed her movements, stayed on her; all the power of the Great Old Ones now become a focused beam. The dome over Middleton vanished as if it had never been; across the city, the supernatural chains of paralysis were broken.

Nyarlathotep spoke within Shego's mind, its voice cold and deliberate. "_We_ _promised you would fulfill your destiny. And now you will_."

"I can't _move_ – " Couldn't move, couldn't control the sparkling plasma that crawled across her flesh like spectral serpents, arcing between her lips as she struggled to form words.

An obscure sixth sense screeched its warning in Kim's mind and heart. Something terrible was about to happen, and her life depended on not being there when it did. Defying the pain that filled all her being, she dragged herself away from her enemy.

"_The time has come, the stars are right,_" the Whisperer sang out with maniacal glee.

"But I kill her. _I kill Kim Possible_. " Shego's eyes filled with tears of anger, of betrayal. "You _promised_. It was my _destiny_!"

"That_ was _never_ your destiny._" It paused, enjoying her confusion. "_That was no more than your _desire. _Do you think _we_ care if specific finite organisms live or die?_"

"But I _saw_ it! Saw it in my _dreams_!"

The silenced voices of countless extinct races could have warned her of Nyarlathotep's duplicity. A billion empty, lifeless universes testified to the unspeakable hungers of Those from Outside. "_Have you never been told_?_ Dreams mean _nothing_. But you have served us well. As reward, when we arrive you shall be the first to receive the peace of oblivion." _

The woman who knew no fear felt a mortal terror growing within her. This wasn't about Kim. It never had been. It was all about _her_. From the day the comet fell, the minute she became more than human, they had been waiting, biding their time, leading her to this precise unholy moment.

"No - it's not _fair_ – "

A force monstrous beyond imagination flowed down the black beam, flooded her mind with the relentless, pitiless violence of a hurricane. Coherent thought was lashed, ripped, blasted with the chattering of a million inhuman voices, processing a million simultaneous streams of data. Astronomical vectors. Adrenalin levels. Correlations between dimensions. Pulse rate. Gravitational forces. Analyzing both Shego and the cosmos around her.

The Whisperer's voice was the last to speak, clearly, slowly, relishing every second of Shego's escalating dread:_ "Ratio of energy production to cellular ruin acceptable." _

The voices fell silent, but their iron control never faltered. Trapped in flesh no longer her own, terrified of what was about to happen, the goddess of chaos could do no more than form a mental plea: "_Please_… please don't do this - "

"_You are the key to the gate, the door between your universe and the void we inhabit. That_ _was _always_ your destiny, little creature. That was the purpose of our cosmic fragment. Now comes the end of all things. A new universe to consume, annihilate, erase from time. You who love chaos, who delight in evil; you should be glad. This is what you wanted; THIS IS WHAT YOU GET." _

Supercharged plasma exploded from every cell in her body, shot out in beams, drew taut, fastened themselves into the sky. Simultaneously source and victim of the power, Shego was dragged from the earth, suspended in the air as if crucified. The presences in her mind brutally pushed the output beyond anything she'd ever dared, far beyond the limits of flesh and blood and bone. Even the Old Ones' psychic control could not curtail her scream, a raw, ragged cry lost in the roar of the plasma torrents. Her heart pounded, about to explode; she twisted and writhed, gasping for every breath, nearly a hundred feet in the air.

The energy storm stretched upward through the spectrum: green, blue, indigo, violet _and beyond_, coruscating waves of unknown colour and purpose. Several Global Justice helicopters that had moved in when the forcefield went down were caught in the maelstrom and instantly disintegrated. Random bolts struck the ground below, blasting craters in streets, shattering buildings.

Hanging there between heaven and earth, she died a hundred times a second, but her healing factor kept her alive, rebuilding her body as fast as the power destroyed it, exactly as her tormentors had planned.

She was the key to the gate. Nothing more. Once the gate was opened, the key, like all matter, would be dissolved.

A gigantic vortex began to form around the edges of the plasma discharge; time and space howled protest at this violation of natural law. The air pulsed and throbbed with a rhythmic thunder that shook buildings and shattered windows. Kim had saved herself from the initial blast, but all around her the cascading energy beams randomly sliced steaming ruts in the earth. The Battlesuit's nanoids were taxed to their limit, trying to keep her alive. They had never been designed to repair the lethal damage Shego had done. Without them, she would already be dead; with them, she was still at the end of her strength. From the day she took on her first mission, she knew this day might come; if this was the end, she would face it like a Possible.

Overhead, the vortex continued to expand, fed by the thunderous plasma cloud, enveloping the sky. Kim had seen many dimensional portals, but nothing like this. Why did it need to be so _big_? What was on the other side?

_What was coming through_?


	8. Approaching Apocalypse

Chapter 8: Approaching Apocalypse

"Finally," sighed Drakken, as the flickering green dome came into view in the distance, surrounded by small flittering specks. "I see the rest of their copters are already there."

"With missiles and bullets. Which we don't have."

"Are you just trying to be annoying?"

"I'm just sayin'."

"Doesn't matter. We blend in with them until we figure out where to go from here."

"Think that'll work?"

"This is Global Justice we're talking about. Of course it'll work."

As if on cue, a voice barked from the radio: "GJ aerial unit Zed beta beta tango sandpiper Charlie, this is GJ aerial leader Alpha gamma beta gamma charlie x-ray. Request reason for approach."

Without hesitation, Drakken keyed the mic, replied "Status Blue forty two, aerial leader. Authorization 3-1-3- er -zucchini. Six."

There was a long silence. "Roger, Zed beta beta tango sandpiper Charlie. Cleared for approach to Target X."

Ron was mystified. "Zucchini?"

"I _like_ zucchini. That'll give us about an hour, while they try to find out what _that_ means. How do you think I got access to so many secret bases and projects back in the day? Sooner or later every organization gets top-heavy with codes, passwords, acronyms and jargon. Nature of the beast. Be glad; otherwise they'd get powerful enough to be dangerous."

"They had the same problem at Smarty Mart – "

An ebon ray shot down from the sky, through the top of the forcefield. The dome suddenly disappeared. The hovering helicopters turned, flew in toward the focus of the beam.

"That is definitely not natural." He watched their compass spin randomly back and forth. "It's either magnetic, or it's messing with the earth's magnetic field. Not too happy about either option."

"One of your wife's new tricks." If Shego was still loose, then Kim was still in danger. He knew she could take care of herself, but - "Let's get over there. Don't know why she lowered the field, but it's time to get the Ron Factor in the game."

"Did it ever occur to you," Drakken growled, "that I'd prefer _not_ to use violence? Once we get past the GJ dolts, I'm sure I can _reason_ with her – "

"Hello? Reasonable people don't threaten entire cities. On world-wide TV." Drakken gave no reply. Just gritted his teeth. "And _I'd_ prefer to stop her before - before anyone gets hurt."

"Yeah, well, we've both got a lot to – "

With a roar they could hear over their copter's engine, a gigantic ball of green fire rose to hover ominously above the city, engulfing the GJ forces, becoming an unearthly colour that had no place in the normal spectrum. Spinning beams shot from it into the overcast sky; a swirling mass of energy began spreading toward them.

The scientist stared in awe. "Hyperdimensional doorway. A portal that big – and still growing… Shego, what are you trying to do? How much power does she _have_?"

"_Dodge now, discuss later!_"

The copter plummeted just as waves of turbulent energy engulfed the sky. Violent winds buffeted them, lashed the trees below. Gibberish and static squalled from the radio speaker; then it fell silent. The indicator lights flickered, went dark. "We're fried. EMF pulse."

"EMF?"

"I'll explain later. Probably after the _crash_."

"Get the nose up, maybe we can glide in – "

The stricken copter shot over a highway jammed with stalled cars.

"A brick glides better than this crate. Hang on."

* * *

Kim was watching – something – in the sky. Loud and bright - fireworks? Thunderstorm? She couldn't remember, couldn't keep her thoughts straight. Danger shook the earth beneath her.

If only she could see better. Everything was so blurry.

Shego was doing something, she knew. Something bad. Why? Shego wasn't her enemy any more. She and Drakken were reformed. They helped save the world. But Drakken had told her that Shego wasn't well. Like her brothers in Go City. They weren't well either.

Where was Ron? She should be with him, but for some reason he was gone and she couldn't go find him. He was probably in trouble. She closed her eyes. Just for a moment. The thunder, the flashing lights, the strange colours in the sky were making her sick. She would rest just a moment, then she would go find Ron and everything would be fine.

It was all so not the drama. Because anything was possible for a Possible.

As the darkness grew deeper around her, she heard a murmuring of voices, a million miles away:

"Over there – is that Kim?"

"That's Kim Possible."

"Is – is she dead?"

"People, I need volunteers; we're going to get her out of there." She knew that voice: Mr. Barkin, from Middleton High. He'd been in a war, once. She thought vaguely that his experience might help them all now, and wondered why she thought that.

Then there was a tangle of voices amid the din and the shuddering and the smell of fire and lightning. A moment of pain, then a sense of motion. Once she briefly came back to consciousness, saw faces: Bonnie Rockwaller, pale and shaken, looking down at Kim, tears on her cheeks. Her hair was matted with blood. Senor Senior Jr. was at her side, his handsome Hispanic features expressionless. There were other people nearby, but she couldn't see them. She did hear Wade Load telling someone how to deactivate the Battlesuit. In the midst of his anxious tirade, she began to drift off again. A voice said, matter-of-factly, "If she makes it through the night, she's got a 50/50 chance."

_I'm glad they're not talking about me_, she thought, and let the darkness carry her away.

* * *

By a miracle, they had managed to land the copter on a Smarty Mart parking lot. Undoubtedly Global Justice would be there momentarily. Their land vehicles were apparently shielded against electromagnetic force; probably the helicopter had been as well, but their proximity to the ever-expanding portal in the sky had been more than the shielding could withstand.

Drakken muttered, more to himself than to Ron, "Now what? Everyone on the planet knows who _I_ am."

Ron had found some mission gear in the cargo hold; he came back wearing GJ garb. "Got it covered, Dr. D."

"Nobody but Shego," Drakken said, dryly, "calls me Dr. D. Got it?"

"Consider it got." He held something up. "Put this on."

"You have _got_ to be joking."

"This'll work. I've got a plan." He looked back toward the cargo hold. "Some sort of weird machine back there, too, strapped down."

Drakken froze. "Machine? Big dish antenna? Helmet?"

"Antenna, check. Didn't look for helmets." He turned, fixed Drakken with an accusing stare. "One of yours? I thought you were out of that business."

GJ jeeps were pulling onto the lot.

"It's not what you think it is. You'll have to trust me on this. Spill your plan. I'm all ears."

A GJ man had stepped up to open the copter hatch when it opened from within. A young agent emerged, followed by someone wearing an ill-fitting scuba suit capped with a diving helmet.

"OK, look," began the GJ agent, "what is going on here? Who are - "

The young man cut him off, his voice hard and authoritative. "Are you familiar with the Administrative Huddle on Need To Know Information, agent?"

"Of course."

"Are you in charge here?"

"Yes sir."

"Your status?"

"Red Twelve, sir."

"Status Orange fifteen. Therefore I assume command. This man" - he indicated the scuba diver – "is one of this country's greatest physicists. You will answer directly to him. No questions. That thing in the sky is extremely dangerous, and time is running out." _Sure hope I'm wrong about that_, Ron thought.

Above them, the monstrous cyclone of pure energy stretched from horizon to horizon; lightning flashed from point to point within its churning maw. Gale-force winds battered them, their strangely modulated howling like some evil language not of earth.

"Yes, sir." The GJ man turned to Drakken. "Orders, sir?"

"Get that device out of the cargo hold. I need it set up here on the lot; I need a mobile generator brought here to power it. Give me pen and paper." Someone produced a memo book and pen; Drakken quickly wrote a list of items, handed it to the GJ man. "I need these tools. Now."

As men hustled into the cargo bay, Ron commandeered a jeep. "I'll be back. Good luck."

"Godspeed, sir," said the man in the scuba suit, and turned back to his work. GJ agents were bringing the machine out of the copter. "There is a man in this city whose scientific knowledge I desperately require. This device has to be up and running before that portal opens, or the results will be disastrous. I'm sure your men can find him for me." _If he's still alive. And if he isn't, we've lost._ "His name is Possible. Jim Possible."


	9. Spectre Projector

Chapter 9: Spectre Projector

Steve Barkin walked cautiously down Lumley Avenue, searching for survivors of the last plasma blast. It was about like lightning; you were either hit or you weren't. Much of the city looked like a war zone, blasted and burned. Town Square was completely uninhabitable now, a crater engulfed in plasma fire. They'd found Kim Possible there, almost dead, just prior to the onslaught. Couldn't believe it was really her. Got her out just in time. By now the cops had taken her to Middleton General Hospital; at least it was in a safer part of town.

"Safer," of course, was pretty relative at this point.

He'd continued to police the area. Leaving the city was virtually impossible, roads jammed, air travel impossible. This seemed his most reasonable course. No more dangerous than 'Nam had been, really. And at least you knew who the enemy was. He glanced into the sky, eyes cold. He sincerely hoped Kim would pull through. Good kid. Strange choice in boyfriends, but a good kid.

He had some sincere hopes for the green freak responsible for all this ruin, too. They involved certain torture techniques that not more than ten people on the planet knew. Some of his old combat training. After what she'd done, she deserved it. Not long after the Lorwardian invasion crisis, he'd seen Shego and Drakken on CNN, announcing their reformation, their general pardon, and, of course, their engagement. Despite appearances, he hadn't bought their repentance tale for a second. Some people are just born rotten. Who could say what Drakken was up to now? Probably something nastier than Shego's seemingly random assault on Middleton.

And to think he'd once dated her, too. _Poor judgment call_, he mused_. Was I just desperate?_

As he passed an alley lit mostly by the flickering of the energy cloud overhead, he thought he saw someone move in the deeper shadows.

"Hey buddy! You all right? "

So far there hadn't been any reports of looting, but he'd knew that was on the way, sooner or later. Came with the territory. On the other hand, someone might be hurt down there.

"Hey!" No reply.

He walked down the alley, away from the flickering streetlights, seeing no one. As he stepped into shadow, a sense of alarm came over him; he whipped around, surprisingly agile for a man his size, ready for a fight.

He was not at all ready for what towered behind him.

He was confronted by a huge metallic cone, bristling with long, irregularly shaped spines oozing greenish slime from their razor-sharp tips. Three eyestalks surveyed him, yellow orbs staring malignly. A mouth gaped open in the monstrosity's bulk, filled with lamprey-like teeth. He reeled from the stench of stagnant water, of rotten meat, of high-school science experiments gone completely wrong.

"_Cheese and crackers_!" He'd disciplined himself to use that expression instead of profanity; as a teacher, he felt he owed it to his students to be a good example. Sometimes it seemed less than adequate.

This was one of those times.

The creature attacked with unexpected speed; Barkin moved just as fast, throwing himself to one side, grabbing a length of pipe sticking out of a dumpster, smashing it against the quivering spines. There was the ringing clang of metal against metal, swept away by the raging wind, the constant roar from above. With a shriek like feedback, the thing spun on its axis, came at him again; he found himself against a wall, knowing that, finally, his number was up. Spines stiffened toward him. He swung the pipe with all his strength, stumbled forward as it whooshed through empty air.

Then he was looking at nothing but graffiti-sprayed walls and dumpsters. Hallucination, nightmare, one of Drakken's creations, he had no intention of finding out. Without looking back, he bolted from the alley. Behind him something again shimmered into existence, again disappeared, snarling as it vanished, cheated of prey.

* * *

The jeep screeched to a halt just before it collided with the barricade around Town Square; a policeman met Ron as he jumped from the vehicle. "You can't go any further, son; it's certain death out there. Global Justice or no Global Justice."

"Global Just – oh, you mean this uniform. Never mind that. I'm looking for Kim. Kim Possible. She was here, fighting Shego. In Town Square."

"Yah, poor thing. Took a real beating at that she-devil's hands. Some young folks and a guy named Barkin saved her. A real take-charge kind of guy, and a good thing, too. She probably woulda died if he hadn't been here. We got there just as the fire started falling; there'd been no chance for her then." He spat on the ground. "I guess Shego was making sure she got her."

_Probably would have died. _He was too late. Way too late. "Where is she?"

"Middleton General." He glanced up at the chaos in the sky. "I hope. Things have been pretty bad. A person can get 'emselves killed about anywhere." Recognition dawned in his eyes: "You're Ron Stoppable. Man, man – I'm sorry – I wasn't thinkin'."

"It's ok. Thanks." He got back in the jeep, took off toward the hospital. The cop watched him depart, unaware of the thing behind him, shambling forward with unnatural silence from beyond the barricade. A mass of twitching pink flesh, corpulent, eyeless, headless, radiating a sickly glow. Fanged mouths in its huge clawed hands, fixed in hideous grins.

A second later gunfire punctuated the constant thunder, followed by screams and a dreadful liquid gurgling. The horror was still ripping huge chunks from its prostrate victim when it flickered and faded away.

* * *

Dr. Anne Possible scrubbed her hands carefully, immaculately, never looking up from the sink, her features fixed and emotionless. Whatever she thought about the situation, she could not allow it to affect her skills. Not now. Especially not now. If there had only been another neurosurgeon available. If only the damage had not been life-threatening. If only things had gone as they had always gone before, with the villains behind bars and Kim home in time for dinner.

If only she and Jim had stopped their daughter years before, when she went on her first mission. If only they had listened when Team Impossible demanded that she quit the world-saving business. What had Jim said? "I thought it was more of a hobby." How could they have treated it so lightly? Now it had come to this. And now it was time.

She stepped into the operating room, terribly aware of the look in the eyes of her surgical team, the way they tried not to meet her gaze. Looking down at the young woman on the operating table whose face so mirrored her own. _This should not be happening_, she thought, and steeled herself for the ordeal.

"Scalpel," she said, and then the lights went out.

* * *

Ron entered the crowded hospital just as the power failed. Ahead he saw a hazy violet glow; there was a commotion, a rustle of panic in the darkness. The lights came back up on emergency power; greasy black smoke was spewing from the upper corner of the hallway, where the ceiling met the wall. Something began forming from the smoke, something made of disjointed, unconnected geometrical shapes, bearing a grotesque resemblance to an emaciated, abstract dog. It glowered ravenously at the terrified crowd, eyes burning like stars, purple drool dribbling from the misshapen gash of a mouth.

Without hesitation, Ron pushed his way to the front, standing between the people and the creature. "Get out of here," he shouted, without looking away from his alien enemy.

He didn't have to tell them twice.

The entity howled, a sound so low and deep that it was felt rather than heard, and lunged, moving anomalously, as if passing through invisible angles. Ron drew on the mystical monkey power, his birthright, and met it head on with a kick that could shatter armor plate. The creature fell back, turned, shrank into the corner of the floor, only to emerge from an angle of the table behind Ron, quickly growing to full size, fast as a rattlesnake, maw wide open. Like lightning, Ron turned, seized the jaws as a desperate man seizes the jaws of a crocodile, holding them open by the strength of fear. The rush of the thing carried him back against the wall and _through_ it; he hit the floor hard, still wrestling with the snapping, drooling fiend until suddenly, without warning, it wavered and vanished, howling subsonically as it did.

Ron stood up, dusted himself off; he was bruised and his clothes torn, but at least he was in one piece and his pants were still on. From behind him there was a noise; he spun to find himself facing a janitor, white-faced, staring in fear.

"Everything's cool, pal. Go change your pants and you'll be fine." The janitor fled, presumably to do just that. Ron looked around anxiously, but apparently his assailant was gone.

He hoped that was "for good," but something within told him there was much more and much worse to come.

* * *

Shego's whole world was the lifeless darkness between the stars. The only sound in that lonely eternity was her anguished breathing; the heavy beating of her heart the only measure of time. She fought to simply open her eyes, to recover even that much power over the body that was now her prison, and failed.

"_Another failure in a life of failures. You cannot escape us."_ The voice of the gestalt thing that called itself Nyarlathotep hissed through the psychic vacuum, mocking her unspoken thoughts. _"Neither will Team Go come to save you. Or stop you. They clung to meaningless concepts of good and evil. When great Cthulhu sent me forth with the summons, they refused to reply. The same force that keeps you alive consumed them. Total destruction to all who defy us." _

It reveled in the abyss of her despair.

"_We are the incarnations of entropy, the instruments of chaos. Unlife. Disorganism. If the gate could be opened from our side, the very fabric of infinity would now be screaming in fright and frenzy. Instead we must depend on chance - and on the weakness of lost souls like you. In other planes of existence we have known many minions: Abdul Alhazred, the Comte d'Erlette, Klarkash-Ton the Atlantean, countless others." _

She struggled desperately to shut out the vile buzzing, but it would not be silenced._ "Not one would obey like you have. No other bore such blinding hatred, so easily manipulated. You dreamed a destiny and thought it real; gained a child's understanding and thought yourself a god. Foolish creature. We owe Kimberly Possible much; without her, you might have escaped us. You should know that she still lives. The vendetta that brought you to this was in vain." _

The Haunter of the Dark reached out to drink in her dismay, but found none. Instead, deep, deep within her nearly broken mind, it was disgusted to discover the smallest ember of hope.

"_She will not stop us. You did see to that. Already we manifest ourselves, here at the leyline nexus, for longer and longer periods. When Cthulhu arrives in this world, the bond will be made irreversible; your destiny will be complete. Until then, we have made you untouchable, indestructible. No hostile hand, no weapon of vengeance can reach you through this majestic storm. Have we not honored you with devastation's glory? Have we not given you impregnable defense? Are you not feared across your planet? All your dreams have come to pass." _

Hanging in space, her suffering infinitely worse than anything Steve Barkin could imagine, tears flooded her closed eyes, leaked between the eyelashes, evaporated in seething plasma before they could run down her cheeks. Long, long ago, she remembered hearing the story of Judas the traitor, who spent eternity in hell for betraying one man.

She had betrayed the whole cosmos.


	10. Perilous Preparations

Chapter 10: Perilous Preparations

"You maniacs have gone _way_ too far. I need to be at the _hospital_! My _daughter_ – " Jim Possible was so angry he was finding it hard to speak. "Global Justice or not, you'll get nothing from me. Take me back."

"Shall we shoot him, sir?" asked a GJ man. Helpful chap.

"No," said the man in the scuba suit. "You need to, oh, patrol the perimeter or something. Some perimeter patrolling could be very helpful right now. Leave Dr. Possible here with me; I'm sure we can come to some sort of mutual understanding."

"Listen, Agent Aqualung, I'm sure you _don't_ understand just how _unmutual_ I can be." Whoever the scuba diver really was, his voice was familiar; probably someone he'd encountered during one of Kim's adventures. _Kim_ – "I'm leaving." He glanced at the trigger-happy GJ agent as he strode purposefully toward the door. "Pal, you'll _have_ to shoot me to stop me."

"We're ok with that." Rifles came up.

The man in charge hastily intervened. "NO! No one _shoots_ anyone. Jim, it's me." He yanked the deep-sea helmet from his head. "Drew Lipsky."

As one, the rifles swiveled toward him. "Dr. Drakken, you are under arrest. Anything you say can and will be used –"

"Yeah, I've already heard that once this week. I believe you were ordered by a Status Orange Fifteen GJ agent to protect and obey the man in the scuba suit. I'm still in the scuba suit, boys. You break the rules at your own risk."

The agents looked at one another in confusion. "He's got something there. The guy _was_ Orange Fifteen."

"Go patrol the perimeter while you work it out. Post a couple of guards at the door. I'll be here with Dr. Possible if you decide to shoot me."

The disgruntled Global Justice men filed out the door; Dr. Possible stood staring at his old college rival, his daughter's greatest nemesis. The man who once saved the world. "What makes you think I'll listen to you?"

"We're men of reason. I had nothing to do with what's happening in Middleton. Shego told the world that I was behind it, but that was a lie." It hurt him to admit that; he hated to condemn her in front of this man, but he had to have Possible's support.

"My daughter almost - my daughter's in the hospital because of her."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry it's come to this. But time is running out for us, and I need your help. Cards on the table – I'm in over my head with this thing." The machine lay before him, access panel open. "But if we can get it working before she wrecks the continuum with that hyperdimensional vortex, I might be able to bring her around."

"'Bring her around?' What are you talking about?"

"I know my wife, Jim. She hasn't been herself for weeks. Weird dreams, strange _names_ from her dreams, finally this power surge and megalomania. As I'm sure you recall, I'm an expert on mind control. Someone's using her."

Possible was examining Drakken's project, interested in spite of himself. Science exercised a strange pull on his fancies. "Another brain tap machine?"

"No. Telepathic amplifier."

"Mind _reading_ device. Still seems pretty unethical to me, Drew."

"Maybe _none_ of us are as good as we _think_ we are," he replied indignantly. "I'm not going to tell you I didn't have some plans for this. Just some money-making schemes. Nothing big, really. But now I can reach Shego with it. Mental communication can't be stopped by her plasma field. And if someone _does_ have some sort of control over her, I think I can break their hold." _And then he'll answer to both of us, _he thought_. I'll hold him down so she can get a better shot at him_.

"You're pretty sure of this."

"Is the Coriolis effect an inertial force? You bet I'm sure of it."

"Who is it, then?"

"Dementor."

"I'm almost sure he's in prison. In Europe."

"He's always hated me. And Shego and I have something he can _never_ have."

"He couldn't upgrade her powers like that. And that vortex! What would he gain by it?"

"It's him. I don't _know_ what he's up to, but it's him. I'm dead sure of it. He's using my own specialty to destroy everything I care for." Choked up with emotion, he struggled to compose himself. "You gonna help me, or not?"

Dr. Possible had walked to the door, was looking up at the madness that filled the sky. In Middleton his daughter might be dying; if he didn't help Lipsky, they might all perish. "No choice. Hand me a soldering iron." He looked a half-finished circuit board over. "Prescribed delay time isn't where it should be, here. Needs a bigger capacitor."

"I _knew_ you were the man for the job."

* * *

Middleton was quickly becoming a menagerie of monstrous forms phasing in and out of existence, things unaffected by any weapon, unimpeded by any barrier. Whatever they were, they were remaining incarnate for longer periods every time they appeared. Some of them brought ice and snow; some came in flame; some drove people to madness with their mere appearance.

Ron had no more vanquished the evil canine-thing when cries of raw terror came from somewhere down the hall. He ran toward the tumult, the blue glow of mystical monkey energy surrounding him, determined to do what he could to hold off this cryptic invasion.

Hovering in the hallway was a constantly shifting mass of iridescent spheres. Nothing more.

_There's nothing frightening about it_, he told himself. _It looks like a crazy Christmas ornament. Like an atom diagram from a science book. There's no need to be afraid!_ And yet he was. Regardless of his own power, he was shaking uncontrollably, his heart hammering.

And somehow he knew that the thing was aware and amused by that.

An orderly burst through the doors leading to the operating rooms, froze in his tracks before the ominous entity, as a tentacle of energy shot out, touched, engulfed, disintegrated the man before Ron's eyes. An inhuman voice crackled through the air, speaking words that no man could understand; a hundred more tentacles burst from the entity, moving across its surfaces like the sparks that emanate from the center of a plasma globe, destroying any matter on contact.

A wall flared, melted, vanished; another wall; beyond was an operating arena, an operation in process. A nurse turned, was caught by the tentacles, evaporated. Another drew back, screaming. Somehow the surgeon continued to work, never looking away from the patient.

With an effort of will, Ron shook off fright's paralysis. "Hey, ugly!" He flung a chair through the air, which vanished in flame before striking the hovering horror. "Over here!"

It didn't move from its position, but cast out a dozen flailing tentacles, a mass of certain destruction. Ron jumped, spun, twisted, hung suspended in the air a second, dodging the lethal feelers with the supernatural agility of his hou quan acrobatics, all too aware that if those feelers even brushed him, he was gone.

"That all you got?" He didn't know if it could understand him or not; it just seemed like the thing to say. "I've seen scarier things in the Museum of Modern Art!"

Its anger roared in his mind; it came at him like a meteor, literally seething with power.

"Come on, then!" He leaped and spun down the hallway, away from the operating room, the thing right at his heels. "Let's do this!" He flung himself through the doors leading into the parking lot; doors and wall were atomized as his pursuer burst forth right behind him. Drawing on the heart of the monkey power, he spun, seized two automobiles by their bumpers, raised them into the air and slammed the thing between them. With a crackling sound and the smell of molten metal, the cars dissolved in his grasp; he barely released them in time to avoid the same fate himself. But the monster was flickering, fading in and out. Its undiminished hatred focused on Ron, battering him psychically, then it flashed and vanished.

"Man, I hope there aren't any more of _those_ around."

There was a sudden darkening of the sky, a shadow where no shadow had been. He spun around, looked into the air. Something was forming. A barely visible, greenish-black haze was spewing from nowhere, beginning to coalesce into some sort of misshapen, miles-high colossus. A voice straight out of nightmare crashed across the earth, an eerie alien phrase that in other worlds was known and feared as the ultimate of evil incantations:

"_PH'NGLUI _

_MGLW'NAFH _

_**CTHULHU **_

_WGAH-NAGL _

_NAFL'THAGN."_

"This _wouldn't_ be cool," Ron said to himself, "even if it _wasn't_ gonna hurt us."

The leviathan menace slowly grew ever more solid, ever more real, its already thunderous chant growing louder and louder. Great Cthulhu, lord and priest of the Old Ones, was finally emerging from the lightless, lifeless void called Outside to seal the doom of a universe.

* * *

Carrying the telepathic amplifier, a GJ truck careened through the streets, dodging the craters, the plasma bolts, the shapes of midnight that lunged at it as it passed. Right behind it was a jeep, pulling a mobile generator. They pulled up at the barricade surrounding Town Square; hastily GJ agents ran cables while others stood guard.

"This is as close as we can get, sir," a GJ man reported to Drakken. "Beyond this point the plasma blasts are constant."

Drakken nodded, climbed up in the cab of the truck, donned the helmet. ""You'll have to control the device," he told Jim Possible. "Once I go in, I won't be conscious of what's going on around me. No matter what happens, don't turn it off until you see some results. If I seem distressed, I want you to boost the power, not cut it. OK?"

"I'm an astrophysicist. You're the one with the mind control expertise. I'll take your word for it."

"Jim, I hope – I hope everything comes out all right for you. And your family."

A shadow fell across the ground; they looked beyond the barricade to see an emerald and black mist seemingly oozing out of the air itself, beginning to form a shape that towered above them into the energy-engulfed heavens. A thick, clotted voice reverberated through the air, intoning gibberish.

James Possible felt the beginning of uncontrollable dread eating at his practiced, scientific composure. "Now what?"

"Start at three-quarters power. Let's do it."

Drakken closed his eyes.

Possible advanced the sliders, monitored the gauges, threw the master switch. A beam fired from the parabolic antenna toward the tiny figure far above, hovering in the midst of the plasma storm.

"Good luck, Dr. Lipsky."


	11. Emancipation Transformation

Chapter 11: Emancipation Transformation

James Possible carefully, painstakingly brought Drakken's brain waves into alignment with Shego's, manipulating the sensitive sliders of the telepathic amplifier like a virtuoso. Yet every time he thought of his daughter's fight for life, and the reason for that battle, temptation arose. A single mistake, a simple error, an unavoidable accident, and both Drakken and Shego would be mindless vegetables for the rest of their lives. No one could ever prove he'd done it on purpose. This technology was untested; who could foresee such disaster?

"_Maybe none of us are as good as we think we are," _Drakken had told him.

He'd never been more conscious of how true that was. "Power's fluctuating," he said to a GJ agent, without looking up from the controls. "Get back there and see if the generator crew can fix that."

Without a word the man left.

He continued to make micro-adjustments to the device. A minute passed; the fluctuations stopped. Slowly the waveforms in both monitor screens came into unison.

* * *

"_Shego…"_

_She had almost become one with the lightless, lifeless, hopeless void. There was barely any memory of where she was, why she was there, why she was being punished, or by whom. There was only the pain and the sense of shame, loss and betrayal. Even cruel Nyarlathotep had ceased its taunting, as there was no longer any tormented response to entertain the Haunter of the Dark. _

"_Shego…"_

_When, from somewhere in the endless gloom, another voice, a familiar voice spoke to her, she did not hear; not until that voice called her by another name. The name that was hers before the comet, before there was ever a Shego. _

_The name very few people knew, and only one was privileged to use. _

_Hearing that name, recognizing that voice, she came up, fighting through the fathomless depths of her subconscious, finally breaking the surface of that oily ocean of night, into a place of air and light and life. _

_Just for a moment she knew that wherever she was, wherever she had been, Drew had come for her, was there with her. Just for a moment, she felt warmth again, and concern, and the empathy that is love. _

_Just for a moment, and then nightmare engulfed them like a flood._

"There will be no interference_," shrieked the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, its anger slashing into their thoughts. "_You could not wait a few more minutes for your destruction, maggot? Then we will boil your brain in your skull_." _

_He was swept away from her by the dark, ravaging tide, his mind, his soul crumbling and corroding under the demon's psychic onslaught. _

"_NO!" She reached out to him –_

And her eyes snapped open, her arms stretched out, suspended a hundred feet above the ruins that had been downtown Middleton. Slowly, resisting the pain in every cell of her body, she spun in the air, looking straight up into the terrible face of the ultimate horror, the thing called Cthulhu. Its diabolical spells rumbled around her, its spectral tentacles lashed the sky; the malevolence it emanated, even in this half-material state, was palpable. Not hatred for her, or for the human race; an unspeakable, demented rage that it shared with all of Those from Outside. The desire to destroy existence itself.

With a wave of nausea, she realized they had infused her with that sick fury as well. Her delight in chaos, in wanton destruction, was what they had made of her with the cosmic fragment and the power it brought with it. Even the colours of her costume were no more than a reflection of the colours of Cthulhu: green and black.

The power was still streaming from her body, feeding the universe-merging vortex until the spells of Cthulhu could make it and the other Great Old Ones' material forms permanent. Nyarlathotep had revealed too much, as villains, even supernatural villains from another dimension, often did: the spell was minutes from completion, but it was not yet established. They were still dependent on her and the power they had given her to allow them entrance to this world.

And that, she knew, was their only weakness.

* * *

There had been maybe thirty seconds of complete telepathic melding, both brainwave patterns in perfect synchronization. Then, without any warning, Drakken's monitor screen had been flooded with chaotic static as all the biofeedback meters went into the red.

Simultaneously, Drakken suddenly stiffened in the truck cab, cried out in agony.

Possible tried to restore equilibrium, advanced the power as Drakken had instructed; the scrambling on the screen became even more catastrophic. Arcs of black energy burst from the control panel, driving Possible from the device.

Drakken's screaming was constant now.

Unable to approach the amplifier, the astrophysicist grabbed the power cable, yanked it out with a burst of sparks. The control board went dark, the carrier beam vanished.

That desperate act cut off all telepathic contact; it was all that saved the blue man's sanity. The cab door opened; first the helmet was flung out, then Drakken fell from the vehicle, hit the ground hard. Two GJ men ran to his aid, but he was already unsteadily getting to his feet.

Jim Possible stood there, still holding the power cable. "Drew, what was it?"

"N-not Dementor." He leaned against the truck for support. "Nothing human." He stood there a moment, catching his breath. "I couldn't save her. It was – was way more than I could handle. I couldn't save her." He stepped forward, picked up the helmet. "I'll have to go in again."

"You can't. I gave it everything we had and we didn't touch it. It'll eat you alive."

"No choice."

"I probably blew every circuit in this thing when I yanked that power cord out."

Before Drakken could respond, the roaring sound from the vortex above them became a screeching cluster of conflicting frequencies, moving slowly and steadily toward the ultrasonic. As one, the scientists and the GJ men looked into the sky, wondering what was happening now.

Across Middleton, terrified humans and conquering monstrosities did the same.

* * *

"_Stop!_" The hated voice was once again no more than a whisper in her mind. "_You belong to us." _

"Not any more."

_Everything I am came from outside_, she had told Kim. _Everything you are came from within. _

Those were Shego's words, but she had once been someone else. The name her husband had spoken in that brief telepathic moment. Someone free of the contamination that was Cthulhu and the Old Ones. And even when she gave in to that taint, reveled in the evil they had filled her with, she had still been human, still found a soulmate, still found love.

Drew might be dead. Or worse. He had dared everything he had to save her. To give her a second chance.

What could she find within?

"_YOU WILL OBEY. HUMAN EMOTION HAS NO POWER TO FREE YOU. IT MEANS NOTHING TO THE COSMOS._"

"It means everything to _us_. It makes us greater than the Great Old Ones." She writhed as if impaled, trying to regain the mastery of her abilities. "My brothers withstood you –"

"_We destroyed them_."

"Destroy _me_, then. I don't think you can." _Not yet_, she thought, as she took a deep breath, about to attempt the impossible. The only answer she had. If the last to materialize was the first to dematerialize, her plan might work. Otherwise the battle was over before it began.

"_The spells of great Cthulhu are concluded. The end of your universe begins now. YOU ARE TOO LATE, SHEGO_."

"That's a lie. And Shego was another lie. I am _Sherri Nicole Gordon Lipsky_. And _this_ _is for real_." She closed her eyes, reached up into the air, taking control of the plasma currents, defying both Nyarlathotep's commands and the excruciating pain of neural overload, drawing the unimaginable power back into herself. She felt herself disintegrating, the healing factor barely able to keep up with the cellular damage.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered now, except ending the madness she had begun.

With a screaming and throbbing of opposing frequencies, the monstrous portal in the sky began closing in on itself, lightning crackling from horizon to horizon as energy devoured energy. The mental voice of the Whisperer stopped its relentless chattering, fell silent.

Sherri Nicole Gordon Lipsky watched in triumph as the mountainous monstrosity called Cthulhu emitted a roar of outrage that was more telepathic than audible, grabbed at her with enormous but immaterial claws. Unable to continue its spell, the terrifying form blurred, wavered, reverted to liquid, to mist, to nothingness.

As the gate between universes irrevocably closed, the remaining entities from Outside would follow their lord and master, one by one, back into the void from whence they came.

The strangely coloured plasma streams came back down the spectrum as the vortex dwindled and shriveled overhead. Slowly, gradually, the tiny figure descended from the sky, surrounded by a sphere of green.

"I think you've misdiagnosed the case, Doctor Drakken," said James Possible. "It looks to me like she's back in charge."

But Drakken was running past the barricade, out across the scorched earth of Town Square. Running to meet the woman he loved.

* * *

Sherri was barely able to avoid tumbling out of the sky; mustering all the power she had, she drifted to earth, stumbled, fell across the seared and fractured earth. Lay there as the healing warmth flowed through her broken and weary body, making her wounds whole, restoring her strength. There was so much to do. So much to repair. Kim – she had to go to Kim. She could heal the young woman. She would. But first she had to see Drew. She knew he was still alive. He had to be. They would go together. And then she would accept whatever punishment the law delivered. Do her time gladly.

She rolled over on her back, looked up into the blue of the sky, the final vestiges of the vortex crackling and sputtering far above her. Closed her eyes, happy to be alive. It was all over.

Someone was standing beside her. She sensed it. Looked up, expecting to see Drew there.

Instead she saw a black, twisted, batwinged horror that viciously seized her with many jointed claws and held her in the air, its three-lobed eye aflame. She cut loose with all the power she had, throwing bolt after bolt of pure energy into its ebon form; its three mouths opened and laughed, speaking with a voice she had come to hate and loathe: _"Do you think you can hurt us with the power we gave you? You were right; last to come, first to leave. We were the first to come through."_

She kicked and punched it, snarling, shrieking, gasping; it held her fast, made her look into its eye as it flickered and flashed like heat lightning on a summer day.

"We remove the gifts we gave you. And we grant you something to remember us by."

Knowledge.

**Where Cthulhu first** ____________________ Drakken was running across the ____________________**The lightless mines**

**came from, and why ____________________**blasted landscape when he saw____________________**of Yuggoth, where**

**half the temporary** ____________________the black thing rise up, seize her,____________________ **dwell the things called**

**stars of history had ____________________**glare into her face as she screamed.____________________ **Mi-Go/The sinister**

**flared forth/The face ____________________** Behind him came James Possible and____________________ **allegory of Tao/Chaugnar**

**that hides behind the ____________________** a troop of Global Justice men. Before____________________ **Faugn's dark hungers**

**Pallid Mask/Why children ____________________**he could reach her, the monster raised____________________**and Y'golonac's forbidden**

**fear the shadows in** ____________________her limp body high, flung her through____________________**lusts/The mystery of the **

**their rooms/Why Ithaqua ____________________**the air to crash down hard at his feet.____________________**Green Decay/The name of**

**carries its victims to ____________________**_"There is a price to pay for defiance," _____________________**the Magnum Innominandum/**

**distant places before** ____________________ the creature hissed. _"We do not die_____________________**Ghatanothoa's paralyzing **

**slaying them/the Seven____________________**_and we do_ _not forget. There are no_____________________**gaze and the legend of the**

**Words of Hastur/The** _____________________happy endings." _It faded and ____________________**Medusa/Yog-Sothoth's**

**Sign of Koth____________________** disappeared.____________________ **horrific offspring**

In a recovery room at Middleton General, a young woman awakened, her eyes wide with nightmare, a woman's name on her lips. A name that meant nothing to anyone there.

It meant everything to Drew Theodore P. Lipsky, known to the world as Dr. Drakken, kneeling beneath the cloudless blue sky, holding the body of his beloved in his arms.


	12. Epilogue: Revelations in Green and Black

Epilogue: Revelations in Green and Black

"There have been no miracles," Dr. Philip Howard told them. "We've been able to use your device to actually enter patients' minds and lead them out of their delusions. It's a remarkable invention. But it can't help _her_."

"Why not?" For three years Drakken had hoped, prayed for a miracle – and when it came, it was no more than dust and ashes. She had awakened from the coma insane with fear, incoherent. This was the first time he had seen her for two months. In that time, her once-black hair had turned snow white. "I used it during the – invasion - or _whatever_ it was. In fact, I used the prototype; there've been a lot of improvements on the original."

"The wounds are too deep."

"I'm not sure you're trying."

"Dr. Lipsky, I understand how you feel. But we have done everything we could to help your wife." The sympathy in Dr. Howard's voice was unfeigned. "The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of our minds to correlate everything we know. There are many things we're better off _never_ knowing."

He looked away. "What's she writing?"

"Apparently something to do with the invasion. We found that her writing keeps the fear at bay, without drugs or other intrusive treatment. As long as she can write things down, she's reasonably lucid. My hope is that seeing the three of you will, perhaps, reach beyond that."

"Doctor Howard," Kim said, "you know her hatred of me fueled a lot of what happened. I'm not questioning your diagnosis, and Ron and I discussed this before we agreed. Still – "

Ron broke in. "My wife is pregnant, Doctor. Our first. Is there any chance of anything going wrong in there?"

"I understand your concern, Mr. Stoppable, and thank you both for coming. You know her powers are gone completely. Forever. But if I thought there was any danger, we wouldn't be here. She is definitely not a violent case."

Shego glanced at Dr. Howard as he entered the room, a dull, uncomprehending disinterest on her face, and continued writing. "You're the doctor," she droned mechanically, not looking up.

"Mrs. Lipsky, there are some people here that would like to see you. Is that all right?"

"Is _she_ with them?"

"Hmm." He hid his surprise well. "We'll see."

Drakken entered the room. "Sherri?"

"Hello…" A dim light in the downcast eyes, a slight smile. She looked at the paper on the desk, covered with strange names and odd symbols, and back at Drakken.

"Sherri, it's Drew. Remember?"

"You were in a dream. The Haunter was _hurting_ me and you came. You came to help."

Drakken came closer, despite Dr. Howard's silent disapproval. "Yes. Yes, I did. But I couldn't do a thing, honey. _You_ did. You fought back. Closed the gate. Saved us all."

Confusion swept across her features. "But dreams mean nothing. _Cthulhu's_ dreams are the winged things that burrow deep in the earth, but our dreams are less real than - than our lives..." As if no longer aware of her husband, she returned to her scribbling.

"Sherri – " There was no response. Drakken stepped back quickly, hoping she wouldn't see the tears. An attendant, seeing his distress, helped him leave.

Dr. Howard motioned for Ron and Kim to come in. "Here are two other visitors, Mrs. Lipsky. Do you know them?"

She looked at Ron without response, but when she saw Kim's face, there was an immediate change. "You're the girl," she murmured, "who saves the world." She reached out; without hesitation Kim stepped forward and gently grasped her hand.

"Did I ever tell you? Someday I – I want to be like you. I _always_ wanted to be just like you." There was childlike adoration on the woman's face. " But first I have to finish this…" She suddenly yanked her hand away as if burned. Looked at her palm, said something that sounded like _Egolonic_, looked back at Kim with fear growing in her eyes. "It knows you, too. Knows all of us. It's waiting. Just beyond the wall."

Drakken had come back into the room, standing beside Ron. The white-haired woman looked from one to the other, increasing distress on her face: "Where is she? Is she here?"

Dr. Howard stepped forward. "Is who here? Everyone is here, Shego." He didn't remember ever using that name before.

"No. No, they _aren't_. There was another girl, a dark haired girl. She wore green and black. We have to find her, Dr. Howard. She's lost. Lost _outside_." She began to cry. "Maybe she's _here_. In the pages. In all the words."

Against her will Kim's eyes were drawn to the page Shego held up. She read the words written there, without understanding:

"…_then shall They return and on that great Returning shall Nyarlathotep carry the word to all the servants of Those from Outside and Yog-Sothoth shall appear as globes to consume and destroy and Cthulhu most terrible lord of R'lyeh and beyond shall resurrect the Old Ones from the Void. From angles of time the Hounds of Tindalos will burst forth and howl for souls and Y'golonac shall break down the wall to fulfill its perversions and ancient Glaaki shall go forth spreading the green decay and living or dead everyone shall bear witness to the truth of That is not Dead which can Eternal lie and with Strange Eons even Death will Die…" _

Tears fell across the pages, tears for everything and everyone that had been lost. No longer aware of the doctor, or Ron, or the girl who saved the world, or the man who loved her, she began, once more, to write out the things that cast their shadows eternally upon her heart and mind. The mad wisdom of Nyarlathotep.

She was struggling to draw something now; obviously the tentacle-faced colossus that had begun materializing just before the vortex was sealed. Scrawled across the crude sketch were two words: HIGH PRIEST.

"They never die," she said, "and they never forget. _I don't want to write any more_. But I have to. _Have_ to. _Destiny_."

They were incarnations of entropy, instruments of chaos. Spoilers of innocence and defilers of dreams.

There are worlds where their names have never been spoken, where the land has never been sullied by their shadows: worlds of bright colours, of undiminished joys, where good always triumphs and truth always has its say. But once they have eclipsed a life, no cleansing, however costly, is sufficient to remove their stain.

In time that book, the creation of a broken, ruined mind, somehow found its way to the world beyond those asylum walls. Suppressed and denied, it came to be known as _Revelations in Green and Black_.

To read it in its entirety was to invite madness as deep and devastating as that which consumed its author. Between its pages was the power to destroy lives, damn souls: the sum of the taint the Outer Ones leave in the minds of any who serve them.

And hidden within it, waiting poisonously to be correlated by some unwise reader, was another path to opening the Gate between worlds, to releasing the Great Old Ones again on a universe they had once failed to destroy. An irreversible path.

That evil text is the legacy of Those from Outside, their curse on any world that escapes the destruction they bring. It possesses an almost sentient will to be found, to be read, to be used.

In other universes, it has other authors, other names: chief among its titles is _Necronomicon_.


End file.
